


Interlude: Bugs

by leonidaslion



Series: Berserker [17]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Spirit Animals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-16
Updated: 2011-08-16
Packaged: 2017-10-22 17:13:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/240458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leonidaslion/pseuds/leonidaslion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joe feels the Walker before he sees him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Interlude: Bugs

**Author's Note:**

> Bet you thought I wasn't going to finish these. ::grins:: Yeah, me too. But who knows? I might surprise all of us!

Joe feels the Walker before he sees him. It’s an itch at the back of his skull, really. One that he’s only ever felt once before, when he was just a boy. It isn’t one he’s ever liable to mistake, though: not with the memories that come with it.

Memories of a great weeping—sounds of anguish and loss drawn from so many throats it seemed as though the very walls of the town mourned their dead. Memories of the fire, and the chained and hobbled Walker knelt before it—a man gone rabid, who was nothing but teeth and bite until Joe’s grandfather tore the beast from his spirit and then caved the Walker’s drooling, snarling face in with an axe. Memories of the Walker’s pelt—the blood-spattered skin of a coyote—and its heavy weight that seemed to drag Joe earthward as he took it from the Walker’s still-warm body and tossed it into the purifying flames.

When Joe looks up from his lunch, he has no trouble telling which of the white men who have come to a halt before his table to watch. There’s no pelt on this one to mark him out of place, but he carries the breath of Other on his back like a foul wind. Those who carry enough Euchee blood to sense the Walker’s presence eye him warily, although they do not know what they fear.

There are none here young enough to have stood beside Joe at that long ago bonfire, and even if he should call the Walker out for what he is, none will stand with him. This is a new age, one of technology and reason. No one will chant the words to free the beast the Walker has bound, or end the ritual with the spill of unclean blood on the ground. No one will help wash the taint of the Walker’s passing away with a song.

Joe is one old, unarmed man standing against a great darkness, but as he looks up at the Walker, he is unafraid.

“Joe White Tree?” That’s the other one, the tall, gangly youth who has come with the Walker.

Joe entertains the thought that this youth stands in ignorance of the evil he accompanies, but there is too much space between them. There is too much stiffness in the tall youth’s stance. He hides it well, but beneath his open smile, he reeks of fear.

And the Walker must know it. He must taste it, if only in his cursed dreams.

Joe nods in answer to the tall youth’s query. He will not lie to turn this evil aside, not even if it has come to kill him for the things he has seen. The things he knows.

But the tall youth’s voice remains easy and respectful as he says, “We’d like to ask you a few questions, if that’s all right.”

At the youth’s side, the Walker breaks into a smile—a warm, engaging grin that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. There’s no gold to his irises yet, but Joe can see the strain around the edges of the Walker’s gaze. This is a man who knows what it is to see the world with a beast’s vision. This is a man who has thought a beast’s thoughts.

This is a man who has killed.

“We’re students,” the Walker says, “from the university.”

A pleasant fiction, if Joe cared to entertain it. Likely a wise fiction, if he wishes to live to see another moon. But he has never been one to hide in a skin that is not his.

“No you’re not,” Joe says. “You’re lying.”

He almost says it. Almost names the Walker for what he is.

But Joe saw what the other Walker did, when Joe was just a boy and there weren’t so many white people around with their white laws and their white logic. His hands washed the blood of his people from the walls. His hands helped bury the bodies.

There are innocents here. Children and women.

Joe keeps his mouth shut.

“Um,” the Walker says. “Well, the truth is—”

“You know who starts sentences with ‘truth is’? _Liars_.”

Perhaps Joe has less patience for the creature before him than he thought.

But instead of attacking, the Walker blinks, then licks his lips and glances over at his companion. It’s a nervous habit, speaking to years of familiarity, and the tall youth steps forward into the silence without hesitation. He opens his mouth, the Walker half hidden behind his shoulder, and the sight of this youth—this young, earnest man—covering for something like the Walker strikes steel into Joe.

“I know what you are,” he says before the youth can speak. The youth starts, perhaps surprised by the grim anger in Joe’s voice, but Joe pays him no mind. His eyes are focused on the true danger here—focused on the Walker.

Joe may no longer have the strength of youth on his side, but there are other strengths. There is wisdom. There is compassion and courage.

He will not cower before this evil.

Joe expects his announcement to provoke anger or fear, and he sees both on the Walker’s face. He does not expect the strong, unexpected flash of shame that chases those emotions as the dog chases the coyote. If he trusted his eyes less, he would doubt he had seen it at all, given the speed with which the Walker recovers and transmutes his expression to stone.

The youth is the true surprise, though, sliding into the booth across from Joe without asking permission and blurting, “You do? Can you—can you help him?”

His face paints an open image of his heart, all of that unease he was radiating now matched with desperation and pleading hope. It isn’t an expression that Joe can easily brush away, even after another glance at the Walker’s dispassionate face.

The Walker Joe remembers from his boyhood was a slight man, one who turned to the Spirit World to steal a beast’s strength and learned too late that there are two-edged teeth in such a bargain. This Walker is sturdy muscle layered over heavy bone. There was, Joe senses, already a taste of blood in his mouth when he made his bargain. There was already blood on his hands.

But as aloof and unfeeling as the Walker’s expression remains, his eyes speak other truths. They are too wide for the chilly glare Joe senses the Walker would like to show. In his own way, this Walker fears what he is just as much as his companion.

Unexpected. Unexpected and perplexing.

Joe shakes his head. “You two had better come with me,” he says, dropping a twenty on the table to settle his bill and then climbing to his feet. “This is no place to discuss such things.”

He walks out of the diner toward his truck without looking back. He does not have to look back. He can sense the Walker following, like a chill on the back of his neck.

 _This is how the deer feels, when he senses the hunter in his crouch,_ Joe thinks to himself.

But he does not slow, and he does not turn around. This is one of the first lessons he learned as a boy.

Do not show the predator your fear.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The old man leads them back to a trailer set on a dusty patch of land. There’s the rusted skeleton of a truck sitting in his front yard, likely the predecessor to the one he’s currently driving. There’s a couch out here too, with a mangy dog resting on the threadbare cushions. Despite the nerves in his stomach, Dean can’t help giving the place a once-over—compared to this dump, he and Sam spent their childhoods living in the Taj Mahal—and then flushes a little when Joe catches him trading glances with Sam.

“You white men,” Joe says with a certain degree of resigned disappointment. “You look always with your eyes. And yet you never truly see.”

“Oh, I’m seeing _plenty_ ,” Dean says, because fuck this. And fuck the stink eye the geezer was giving him back in the diner.

Sam sets a hand on his arm—lightly, because Sam doesn’t seem to like touching him at all since he found out, despite his overly cheerful insistence that everything is fine—and then tosses Joe one of his placating, ‘I’m-sorry-my-brother’s-a-moron’ smiles.

“What is it we’re missing, Mr. White Tree?”

Joe shakes his head and waves a hand dismissively. “I didn’t bring you here to educate you. And, frankly, I don’t care what you think of me. What I do care about is _that_.”

He jabs one finger at Dean, who scowls to hide the slinking sensation in his chest and then turns his head to look out over the surrounding land. It’s too flat out here, and the grass is too short to provide good cover. There’d be poor hunting under the moon.

“You said you knew what was wrong with him,” Sam says—not defending Dean, Dean notices. Not caring that Joe’s treating him like some subhuman Nazi.

Anger burns in Dean’s gut, as fierce and hot as it burned in the face of Sam’s sneering superiority when he first found out what Dean’s carrying around inside of him. He’s so sick of Sam’s crap, sick of Sam pretending he doesn’t think Dean has the IQ of a well-trained German Shepherd.

Christ, how dumb does Sam think he is, to have automatically assumed Dean that called the goddamned wolf? Pretty fucking dumb, is what. Dumb enough that Sam doesn’t expect him to see through Sam’s bullshit charade of ‘everything’s fine’. Sure, everything is hunky-dory—just as long as Dean doesn’t get too close and keeps his hands to himself.

Dean’s fury dies within moments, though. Sam might be wrong about how he ended up saddled with the furry son of a bitch, and he might have underestimated Dean’s ability to read him, but he’s right about Dean all the same.

If Dean were smarter, he wouldn’t have gotten into this fucking mess in the first place.

That’s half the reason Sam’s attitude pisses him off so much, actually. Dean hates having his shortcomings shoved in his face. He hates the sore, bitter ache that’s set off in his chest whenever he catches Sam watching him warily from the corner of his eyes or putting extra distance between them as they walk down the street. And he really fucking hates that he’s weak enough to go along with the fiction—desperate enough to put up with anything from Sam as long as Sam stays, as long as Sam doesn’t wake up one morning and decide that he’s done dealing with such a fuck-up of an older brother.

That day’s going to come eventually, though, and when it does, it will be Dean’s last, one way or another.

Death or madness. Redemption or damnation.

The bullet or the wolf.

At this point, he’s wound up enough inside that the fall of the axe is going to come more as a relief than anything else.

“Come inside and we will speak,” Joe says, interrupting Dean’s thoughts.

Dean sighs internally, resigning himself to what is undoubtedly going to be an unpleasant conversation, and starts forward at Sam’s side.

“Not you.”

Dean pulls up short. He really shouldn’t be surprised to see Joe’s finger pointing at his chest, but somehow he is anyway.

“I’ll speak to you,” Joe adds, turning his attention to Sam. “But I won’t have Walkers in my home.”

Dean waits for Sam to tell Joe Dick Tree to go fuck himself. Or at least to put up some kind of token argument. After all, they’re brothers and everything is just fine. Sam trusts him, Sam’s going to save him.

But instead of pouring out his usual bullshit, Sam shoots an uncomfortable, apologetic glance toward Dean and then shrugs. He _shrugs_ , the son of a bitch.

Suddenly, Dean’s chest feels three sizes too tight. His throat is choked with anger and hurt and shame. And fear, of course, because this is it, this is the first sign of the end. This is the sign he’s been waiting on.

His eyes burn, but he manages to keep them clear as he forces a too cheery grin on his face. “No problem,” he says. “You two take your time. I’ll just chill with Fido over here.”

He half expects the old man to tell him to keep off the furniture and away from his dog, but no one says anything as he makes his way over to the couch. The dog lifts its head as he nears, scenting the air, and then jumps off its cushion and scurries beneath the trailer with its tail between its legs.

Great, even the dog can’t stand him.

For an instant, Dean is so sick of himself that he’s tempted to pull the gun tucked at his back and end things right the fuck now. Before he can reach for the pistol, though, he’s hit with a gut-deep surge of denial as the wolf stirs inside him. It’s sleeping still—although barely, if it’s awake enough to be shifting so restlessly against his thoughts.

 _I decide if I want to end it,_ Dean thinks. _Me. It’s my own damned decision._

The denial strengthens as Dean fights to get his hand around the grip of his pistol, until his entire arm vibrates with the conflicting orders his brain is sending. Or rather, that his brain and the wolf’s limited intelligence are sending.

But this is Dean’s body, damn it, and no stupid, body-snatching furball is going to keep him in it if he decides otherwise. Gritting his teeth, Dean pushes harder.

The wolf rouses, swimming close enough to waking that Dean almost catches the edge of its voice in his head. He can’t hear any words yet, but—Christ, this is stronger than it’s ever been before while he’s had the amulet around his neck. Even in their shared dreams, he hasn’t gotten this strong a sense of the damned mutt’s personality.

Panicked, Dean makes a supreme effort and manages to twitch his hand back a full inch. And then freezes again as the wolf grumbles in his head, shaking off the last vestiges of sleep.

 **::No earth. Earth bad. Deanmemine stay here. Be two-as-one.::**

It still isn’t—quite—loose. Not completely. But it’s actively straining against the amulet’s hold now, and Dean can sense the barrier stretching membrane thin.

Oh God. Oh God, it’s happening. It’s happening right fucking now.

The wolf pants, straining, and suddenly it isn’t suicide Dean’s thinking about—or at least not the type that requires a gun.

He can actually see himself doing it in his head—reaching up with his hand… taking hold of the amulet… giving a sharp, swift yank to snap the cord. And then, after that, there will be running over the plains, and good hunting, and Dean won’t ever be alone again. He and the wolf will be two-as-one, and—

It’s the sting in his palm brings Dean back to himself, and he looks down to see that he’s actually gripping the amulet, tightly enough that blood is leaking from his clenched fist.

 _Fuck you, furball,_ he thinks, and focuses every last ounce of his willpower and determination on opening his hand again. Even trapped by the amulet’s lingering power, the wolf fights him for every minute twitch of his fingers. It snarls, teeth and claws thrashing on the other side of the barrier, and all Dean can think about is the fact that Sam is less than thirty feet behind him. He can’t lose control this close to his brother.

 **::Notpack!::** the wolf growls, latching onto the thought. **::Left you. Always leaves you. _Hurts_ Deanmemine.::** It growls again, lower, and this time the sound promises violence.

Oh fuck, if the wolf gets out now, it’ll tear Sam’s throat out with Dean’s teeth.

The desperate fear that accompanies that realization gives Dean the extra surge of adrenaline he needs to gradually, bit by pain-staking bit, unclench his hand. Blood drips from his palm down onto the grass and the wolf whines as it paws at the barrier keeping it from Dean’s mind.

Dean might have won the first round of this battle, but the wolf isn’t going to stop pushing. And while Dean feels drained and weakened from the fight, he isn’t reading anything of the sort from the son of a bitch in his head, which means Dean isn’t going to be able to keep it locked up much longer.

He has hours at most. Maybe a day.

Desperately, he casts his mind around for a way out of this—for some way to stall the wolf, to buy himself some more time.

Jesus Christ, why the fuck did this have to happen now? The wolf was sleeping just fine a few minutes ago, and it isn’t like Dean lost the amulet again. The little horned face wasn’t damaged; nothing magical was poking around in Dean’s head. Nothing was happening at all, actually, so why the hell did the wolf suddenly pop up like a bomb went off next to it? Why did it have to choose this particular moment to—

Wait.

The wolf didn’t start to stir until Dean was seriously considering pulling the trigger. It didn’t strain to throw off the amulet’s hold until he reached for his gun.

Dean woke the fucking thing up himself.

It’s almost a new low in stupidity for him, second only to what he let the wolf do to Dad. For a moment, Dean is right back where he started, thinking about the gun and how nice it would be not to feel anything at all, not to be able to screw up anymore. As the wolf pricks back to snarling alertness, though, another thought occurs to him.

If Dean woke the wolf up, maybe he can also soothe it back to sleep.

 _I’m not going anywhere_ , he thinks, lowering his hand to his side. _No gun—you reading that, furball?_

The sensation of paws scrambling at the barrier fades and instead Dean gets an illusory cock of the wolf’s head. **::Will not hunt earth?::** it asks cautiously. **::Deanmemine stays?::**

“Yeah,” Dean exhales, his mouth curling around the bitter words. “Yeah, you’ve got me by the shorthairs, you son of a bitch.”

He grimaces at the mental tail wag the wolf gives him, then silently adds, _Now go the fuck back to sleep._

 **::Two-as-one is good,::** the wolf replies petulantly. Then, slyly, it adds, **::Hornhead is bad. Smash hornhead.::**

“In your dreams, bitch,” Dean mutters. “Now go to sleep already.”

 **::DeanMeMine is lonely. Like younglonerunner, needs pack. I stay. We become two-as-one, DeanMeMine has pack. Is good.::**

Frustration bubbles through Dean, tensing his muscles, and he has to take a deep, shaky breath to keep from screaming. As he lets the air out again, he reconsiders his approach. Before, when the wolf was waking up, it seemed to rouse more every time Dean interacted with it. Maybe if he ignores it instead, zones his mind out into something as numb and quiet as he can manage, it’ll get bored and drift off again.

Dean stares out over the flat land before him and tries to slip his mind into that unfocused grey zone he used to find during Dad’s PT sessions. It’s difficult without the physical exertion to focus on, though—impossible with the wolf yammering away in his head about the hornhead ( _nastybreakithate_ ) and becoming two-as-one ( _goodperfectnowplease_ ).

Right. So if Dean can’t fill his head with nothing, then he needs to fill it with something else. Something loud enough to drown out the wolf. And he has just the thing.

Shutting his eyes, Dean starts to run through Zeppelin II in his head. The wolf shuts up and cocks its head attentively at the sound, which is surprising. Even more surprising is the slow tail wag Dean senses. The furry bastard is actually _enjoying_ Dean’s memories of the music.

As the last notes of ‘Whole Lotta Love’ fade into silence, it lets out an excited yip. **::More. Hear more wordhowls.::**

Yeah, not the reaction Dean was going for.

Still, if it’s willing to listen to music, then Dean still has a way in. It’s just the vehicle that’s wrong.

So instead of following up with ‘What Is and What Should Never Be’, Dean switches over to ‘Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door’. The wolf settles gradually, curling up into a smaller, quieter form to listen. Encouraged, Dean follows Dylan up with Queen’s ‘Who Wants To Live Forever’, then segues immediately into the Beatles with ‘Hey Jude’.

By the time McCartney is telling Jude he’s waiting for someone to perform with, the wolf has sunk back into slumber.

An uneasy slumber, but right now Dean will take what he can get.

He opens his eyes again and looks down to see that his entire body is trembling. It probably won’t be noticeable to anyone else, but he frowns and makes an effort to regain full control over his muscles anyway. A wind rolling out of the plain alerts him to the thin sheen of sweat layered over his skin and the damp hair just brushing the nape of his neck. He’s filled with a bone deep weariness, like he just finished sprinting a marathon.

Dean doesn’t have to turn around to know that Sam and the old man have gone inside. Have probably been inside for some time now, actually. He can hear their voices, slightly muted through the metal trailer walls. If he concentrates, he thinks he’ll be able to make out the words.

Could he have done that before the wolf woke again? Should he be able to do it now?

 _I should go,_ he thinks again. _If the wolf won’t let me eat a bullet, I should go find Dad and let it happen._

Only he doesn’t trust Dad to stay away from Sam. The wolf wouldn’t come back on its own—it fucking hates Sam, the jealous bitch—but Dad… Dean just doesn’t trust him not to try for a matched pair.

He remembers Dad’s expression when he woke with Dad’s hand on the amulet. He still hears the warning growl of Dad’s voice over the phone—asking if Dean wants Dad to come get him.

And Dean’s nothing more than a dumb foot soldier. Not like Sam.

Dad has always wanted Sam at his side. He’s wanted Sam at his side more than he ever wanted Dean there.

Which means that Dean can’t go to Dad. And he can’t go off on his own and ditch the amulet that way either, because he already knows that he won’t be able to help himself. Just as soon as the soul bleed progresses far enough, he’ll shoot straight back to Dad’s side like a homing pigeon. Probably belly-crawling and whining for forgiveness the whole way.

And then they’ll be right back to the situation Dean is desperate to avoid, with Sam’s life and soul on the chopping block.

There’s only one acceptable road before him—the road on which Dean removes any and all threat to Sam. And if the wolf is going to keep him from doing that the easy way, then Dean is just going to have to stick around long enough to figure out how to berserker-proof his brother. Unfortunately, in order to do _that_ , Dean’s going to have to figure out how to keep Sam from ditching him.

Pretty tall order, when Sam is already halfway there and Dean himself doesn’t precisely think it’s a bad idea for Sam to get some distance between himself and the wolf.

 _He’ll be just fine if you can keep yourself from fucking up again,_ Dean reminds himself, and then wipes his unbloodied left hand over his mouth.

Okay, step one in Operation Reassure Sam is not to let Sam find out how thin a thread Dean’s really hanging by. Sam can’t know that Dean almost lost himself out here. He can’t know that the wolf woke—that it could happen again at any time. Which means that Dean is going to have to guard himself and his reactions 24/7. Forget sleep, unless Sam’s not in the room. Dean’s been getting by on a couple of hours for a while now; if he mainlines coffee and sugar, he can manage with less.

Still, the hours stretch out in front of him—the strain of constantly monitoring his thoughts, his actions—and black, thick despair creeps into him like a fogbank.

Dean licks his lips and lets himself think—fleetingly—about the weight of the gun against the waistband of his pants. Before the wolf can do more than twitch and whimper softly, his mind is further behind him at the trailer, where the old man is telling Sam God only knows what.

Dean wonders for the first time whether Joe might be the answer to all of his prayers. The dude is old, but a man doesn’t have to be young to aim a gun. For that matter, Bobby is a viable option—just as long as Dean can think of an excuse to get them there without alerting either Sam or the wolf of his intentions.

Dad won’t come seek out Sam with Dean gone—that much Dean is sure of.

Dean sits down on the couch and turns his face up to the sky, allowing his attention to wander and doing everything he can to ignore the nervous hope in his gut. He’ll just… He’ll be over here when they come out. Not paying attention to anything at all.

Dean closes his eyes to wait.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The inside of Joe’s trailer is as cluttered as anything Sam has seen, but Joe has no trouble locating a coffee pot and some cups. He ushers Sam over to a built-in table while it brews, and Sam sits down where he can keep an eye on Dean through the window.

He feels more than a little guilty about what happened outside—for not at least putting up some sort of token resistance to Joe’s attitude. But they need Joe’s knowledge, and Sam had no way of knowing whether siding with Dean was going to get them both kicked out. Sam’s positive that placating Joe was his only reason for cold-shouldering Dean like that.

Well, he’s almost positive.

It’s just that everything has been so stressful since Dean told him about the wolf. Sam has done his best to make sure everything feels normal between them—trying to make up for his initial conclusions about how Dean got infected—but it’s difficult when Dean is treating him like a leper. Dean keeps moving away when Sam goes to touch him, like some sort of skittish ( _wolf_ ) animal. Most of the time, he won’t even meet Sam’s eyes when they’re talking.

Unless he’s pissed, of course, and then Sam gets the full force of Dean’s personality shoved down his throat.

Sam doesn’t know whether it’s because Dean has stopped trying to hide or if things have been deteriorating at a faster pace than Dean will admit, but Dean has also been… strange… since their talk by the side of the road. For one, he’s stiller than normal—and not in a relaxed, lazy way. Sometimes, Dean holds himself so still that Sam’s muscles ache in sympathy, and he’s constantly hovering in an enhanced state of alertness that sets Sam’s teeth on edge.

When they discuss their jobs, Dean talks in terms of ‘hamstringing’ their ‘prey’ and ‘tearing out its throat’. When they check into a new motel, Dean ranges around the room—from bathroom to beds and back again—and the angle at which he holds his head makes Sam think his brother is scenting his new environment. After he showers, Dean emerges with a towel wrapped around his waist and his hair still wet and then sends droplets flying as he gives a mighty shake of his head and torso.

At night, he won’t settle. While Sam lies in his own bed trying to sleep, he has to listen to Dean moving restlessly around the room until his body gives out and drops him—sometimes on the bed, but just as often on the floor, where Sam finds him curled in on himself in the morning, one hand twitching in a weird digging movement. Sam can’t help but compare the motion to a dog’s paw, and he knows that, somewhere in Dean’s dreams, he’s running.

Equally as unsettling are Dean’s eating habits. He’s always enjoyed his meat, of course, but only when it’s burnt to the point of charring. Now he orders everything rare, and sops up the bloody grease from his plate with whatever starch is closest at hand—last few bites of his burger bun, a couple of French fries, some hash browns.

Taken together, Dean’s new quirks paint a clear picture—clear enough that Sam is terrified his brother won’t hold out long enough for them to find Dad. He has nightmares about it, about Dean finally losing himself to wolf and forcing Sam to do the unthinkable. About _failing_ to do the unthinkable and condemning Dean to a fate that Sam knows his brother considers worse than death: letting Dean become one of the monsters they hunt.

As he stares at Dean’s back through Joe’s window, the thought of that burden—the decision to either kill Dean or fail him—tightens Sam’s throat. Bobby knows about Dean, and Sam could always drive them back to Bobby’s when ( _if, damn it: if_ ) the time comes. Bobby would have the strength to do what needs to be done.

But Sam doesn’t even trust himself to do that much. He doesn’t trust himself to do anything but go to pieces and sit quietly while Dean tears him apart.

Christ, he just lost Jess. He can’t lose Dean too. He just _can’t_.

Joe draws Sam from his thoughts by setting a mug down in front of him. The coffee in the mug steams, black and strong smelling, and Sam blinks quickly a couple of times to clear the threat of tears from his eyes. Not that Joe is looking at Sam as he sits down—choosing a seat to Sam’s left rather than across the table.

Sitting so that Dean isn’t at his back, Sam realizes with an uncomfortable lurch.

He should say something. He should at least express some sort of faith on Dean’s behalf—some faith in Dean.

But Dean isn’t Dean anymore. His behavior over the last few weeks has proved that much. And Sam can’t forget the look in Dean’s eyes when he first found out. He can’t forget the wolf in his brother’s gaze, or Dean’s low warning that ‘it doesn’t like you much.’

How can Sam protest Joe’s caution, when Dean makes the hair on the back of his own neck stand on end?

“Thanks,” Sam settles for saying as he pulls his mug closer.

“There’s no sugar,” Joe announces. “Or milk. I meant to go to the store after I finished my lunch.”

“That’s fine,” Sam hastens to assure him, and takes a sip to prove it.

Joe’s look is slightly warmer as he admits, “I don’t care for the taste myself. But it wets the throat and sharpens the mind. Besides, my doctor tells me less sugar. So, between coffee and apple pie, I will enjoy the apple pie and bear with my coffee.”

Sam tries to smile at the joke, but his eyes are caught on Dean, who is still standing at attention like someone set him there and told him to guard. Not that any human sentry could ever stand that still for that long.

Joe follows Sam’s gaze and nods, sobering.

“He’s a Walker.”

Sam recognizes the term from what Joe said outside, and latches onto it to ask, “When you say ‘walker’, what do you mean? Not a skinwalker.”

The prospect seems too terrible to be possible, but Sam’s memories of the shooting are admittedly blurred by shock and oxygen deprivation. And it was St. Louis where Dean started to deteriorate. Because he lost the amulet supposedly, but what if that’s just a cover story? What if Sam has somehow been traveling around with the wrong Dean since St. Louis?

“No,” Joe says, allowing cool, relieved air to flow back into Sam’s lungs. “Skinwalkers are born as they are. This, what he is, this is worse. A spiritwalker is a perversion. They make themselves.”

“Dean didn’t,” Sam speaks up. He feels on stronger ground here, finally, in defending at least Dean’s motivations. “It was an accident during a hunt.” As Joe looks at him skeptically, Sam hastens to explain, “He was hunting a berserker and the spirit jumped bodies on him. Dean didn’t ask for it to happen. He’s keeping it under control with the, uh, the amulet? The one around his neck?”

Joe is still frowning, but he nods to show that he noticed.

“And we’re trying to find a cure,” Sam adds. Or, well, _Sam_ has been looking since he found out. Quietly. So that he doesn’t have to get into an argument with Dean over his ‘pointless’ research.

 _Sure,_ a cynical voice pipes up at the back of his head, _and this secrecy has nothing to do with the fact that you don’t know what he’d do if he found out you were trying to cure him? What the wolf would do?_

But it doesn’t. Sam’s sure it doesn’t. He trusts Dean.

Mostly.

“There is no cure.” Joe’s implacable tone and expression drop the bottom out on Sam’s stomach.

“There must—”

“There is nothing. I have never heard of a Walker being made the way you describe, but I think it makes little difference. Walkers bond on a level too deep for the bond to be severed. You cannot release the spirit without irreparably damaging the man’s soul. They are too entwined.” He laces his fingers together in demonstration. “Two-as-one.”

“How do you know all this?” Sam asks. He’s hoping it’s no more than guesswork, but Joe’s next words kill even that slim chance.

“My grandfather was the shaman of our people. He was one of the last versed in the old ways, although our faith was stronger then. There were no disbelievers when the Walker came, to name him something he was not, or excuse his massacres as the acts of simple madness. I was just a boy, but I asked my grandfather a man’s questions, and I received a man’s answers in return. I was there when they freed the spirit the Walker had chained and put the Walker in the earth. I remember the fire. I helped destroy his pelt.”

Joe raises his chin and twists his head to look out the window at Dean. Sam follows his gaze to look at his brother’s back, where Dean is still standing with his eyes presumably on the horizon.

“My people have a long history with Walkers,” Joe continues. “There were some, when the white man came, who thought that becoming such a creature would save our land. They believed that they could become as the Walkers of legend. They did not believe that things had changed.”

“The Walkers killed more of my people than your ancestors ever did.”

Sam shifts uneasily and avoids meeting Joe’s stern stare by looking back out the window at Dean. Dean is in motion finally, lowering himself down on the couch and arranging himself into a deceptively lazy sprawl that Sam doesn’t buy for a second. Not even when Dean tilts his head back on the couch and shuts his eyes.

Just a few months ago, if Sam had caught Dean in that pose he would have accused him of knowing exactly what he looks like—of using his looks and his body to lure pretty girls in close enough to get the full effect of his grin. And Dean would have been guilty as charged.

Now… Now Sam doesn’t know who his brother is putting on this harmless, sunbathing god act for. Or why.

Likely, he doesn’t want to know.

Pulling his eyes from Dean is difficult, but Sam manages to turn his attention back to Joe as he asks, “Why did you bring us here?”

Joe nods and leans back in his seat. “There is no cure for your friend’s sickness, but there is a remedy. I am too old now, to perform the ritual for you. But I can give you the words, and the tools.”

He casts his gaze to the left and Sam turns his head, tracking along Joe’s line of sight until his own eyes come to rest on a stone axe mounted high on the trailer wall. His blood cools with a sudden chill.

“No,” he says firmly as his stomach clenches with a tight ache. “That’s not an option.”

For the first time, he consciously understands that he really won’t be able to do it, no matter how much Dean begs. He isn’t going to put his brother down like a sick dog. Not today, not ever.

And if Joe thinks he is, then Sam has a bullet with his name on it. Winging the old man in the shoulder won’t kill him, but it’ll put him down long enough to grab Dean and get them both away.

Joe shrugs as though it doesn’t matter to him one way or another, although his unhappiness with Sam’s decision is clear in the set of his mouth.

“Then the beast will take control, magic charm or no. And in his anger, he will butcher many innocents before he is brought to an end.”

“No,” Sam repeats. “There’s a way to fix him. There has to be.”

Because as uneasy as Dean makes him these days, he’s still Sam’s brother. He’s still _Sam’s_. And damned if Sam is going to let that wolf take Dean away from him.

“Besides, he’s still fine,” Sam argues. “He’s—the amulet is working.”

Joe gives him an unamused look that says he can see right through Sam to the restless nights, and Dean’s new eating habits, and the low-grade nervousness that Sam always feels when Dean is standing behind him. Dean’s mere presence screams ‘predator’ to the deep, primal instincts at Sam’s core, and Joe knows it.

That doesn’t mean Sam’s going to admit anything out loud, whether Joe cares for liars or not.

“Dean and I,” he says instead, “we grew up dealing with things like this—skinwalkers, spiritwalkers, ghosts. He’s always been… different. Whatever you’re seeing, it’s just—this is how Dad raised him to be.”

It could almost be the truth.

Joe continues to look dubious, but after a long silence he only says, “I hope for your sake that you are right. I truly do.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

When Joe shows Sam out of his trailer almost an hour later, there is guilt in his heart. Twice, he has had to dash the young man’s hopes: once for the Walker, once again for this housing community of his. No fault rests on Joe’s shoulders for either ruin, but Joe wishes he could have sent some scraps of hope Sam’s way.

Against his better intentions, he _likes_ this young man.

The Walker comes to his feet when Joe opens the door, going from lazy relaxation to attentive tension in the span of a heartbeat. His eyes are narrowed against the glare of the sun, his hand tucked behind him at the small of his back, where Joe suspects he has a weapon of some sort. There’s a stillness about him, something no human could ever master, and an alert tilt to his head.

Although Sam has given him no specifics, as Joe meets the Walker’s eyes, he has no doubts what sort of beast is chained to the Walker’s spirit.

The Walker holds his position until he spots Sam emerging behind Joe and then, between one blink and the next, drops back beneath his camouflage. If Joe hadn’t seen that posture of uncanny watchfulness with his own eyes, if he didn’t still feel that unnatural itch in his head, he would have sworn it was just a normal white man standing over there, with all the arrogance that youth and good looks bestow.

If Joe didn’t know to look deeper, he might not have caught a fleeting impression of frustrated disappointment about the Walker either.

“Thanks, Mr. White Tree,” Sam says.

Joe reluctantly takes his eyes off the Walker to take his hand. “I told you, call me Joe. And I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you the things you wished to hear.”

“That’s all right,” Sam replies. The smile he gives Joe is worn around the edges with resigned sorrow. “I’m sort of used to bad news. But I’m also used to finding solutions to impossible problems, and Dean has about a hundred lives, so…”

He shrugs with false levity—a lie that Joe does not begrudge him. With the company he keeps, Sam has a hard, bloody road ahead of him.

“I wish you luck,” Joe says, and then watches silently as Sam walks over to meet the Walker, who has his right hand shoved deep in one coat pocket and his right shoulder angled away from his companion. The two exchange words briefly, too quietly for Joe to hear, and then Sam turns and walks over to the passenger side of their car. The Walker pulls a key from his jeans—reaching awkwardly for it with his left hand instead of retrieving it with his right, which makes Joe frown.

The Walker is hiding his hand for some purpose. He is lying, even now, to the faithful friend whom Joe has come to hold in high regard.

“Walker!” Joe calls, speaking on a surge of righteous anger.

The Walker looks over with a surprised expression—surprise unexpectedly mingled with hope. Sam pauses with his door open, resting one hand on the roof of their car as he looks nervously back and forth between the Walker and Joe.

After a brief hesitation, the Walker steps away from the car. He keeps his right hand inside his pocket as he approaches, moving slowly so that Joe has plenty of time to note how smoothly he walks, the economy of movement in each step. If this one were to run, it would be with a rangy lope.

When the Walker is close enough for a private conversation, he stops and regards Joe with an unblinking stare that’s more challenge than anything else. Joe has been stared at like this before, when he visited his granddaughter in San Diego and took her to the zoo. It was unnerving enough then, when there were bars between him and the wolf.

Pushing his unease away, Joe squares his jaw and says, in a low voice, “Your friend believes that trinket around your neck is working.”

“My brother,” the Walker corrects.

The news comes as a surprise, but a mild one. Now that he’s been told, Joe can see the resemblance. And the family bond explains some of Sam’s unwavering dedication. Some of his blindness, too.

“Your brother, then,” Joe agrees. “He says there is little danger, to him or others. That you control your own mind and heart.”

Even if Joe hadn’t already observed enough evidence to the contrary, the way that the Walker drops his eyes and bites his lower lip would brand that for the lie it is.

“I can see it in you,” Joe continues. “The wolf. It is strong, and it is not as trapped as you have led your brother to believe.”

The Walker’s body tenses. As he pulls his right hand from his pocket, Joe sees that his palm is cut and bloodied. He reaches up, brushing the charm with his fingertips, and then starts. With a lick of his lips, he shoves his hand back into his pocket again.

Joe doesn’t comment on his behavior, or on his injury, but he does advise, “You must regain control of yourself, if you can.”

One side of the Walker’s mouth curls in challenge and he tips his head back. “Or what?”

“Or you will bury your brother, and a good many others.”

There’s still enough of the man he was left in the Walker for his mouth to tighten unhappily at that. The unhappiness is gone in a moment, though, replaced by arrogance and a cruel half-snarl.

“Why don’t you stop me, then?” he demands. “You’re so fucking righteous, why don’t you just put one right between my eyes?”

Joe’s breath catches in sudden realization as he meets the Walker’s desperate gaze. This is the strangeness he sensed—the disappointment when he emerged unarmed from the trailer, the hope when he called the Walker back.

The Walker _wants_ to be destroyed.

Joe looks past the Walker to Sam, who is watching them both with a tense, unhappy set to his mouth. Sam’s hand is still resting on the roof of the car, but there’s a gun beneath it now. There’s warning in his gaze.

Much as Joe would like to oblige the Walker’s request, he understands immediately that Sam will not permit it. At the first sign of danger to the Walker, Sam will lift the weapon beneath his hand, and he will fire.

When Sam turned down his offer of assistance, Joe assumed that his reluctance stemmed only from the Walker’s persistent clinging to life. He assumed that Sam was thinking with the Walker’s thoughts, and tending to the Walker’s desires. But he has not looked upon these two with clear eyes.

It is Sam who keeps the Walker chained here. It is Sam who bars the Walker from purification.

Joe’s reassessment of the situation keeps him silent too long for the Walker’s nerves. The Walker shakes his head, scuffing the earth with one foot, and turns back toward the car. He’s still trying to mask the wolf as he walks back to the car. He’s still lying, to his brother and himself.

But when Joe looks back to the Walker’s brother, he sees that Sam has hidden the gun again. Sam is wearing an innocent, unthreatening expression, as though he were not ready a moment ago to shoot Joe on his own steps.

Joe prefers the Walker’s lies.

“What was that about?” Joe hears Sam ask.

The Walker opens his own door and glances back at Joe. For a moment, Joe is locked into that stare again, unfriendly and a little territorial. Threatening. But there is wistfulness and sorrow in the Walker’s gaze as well.

He has the eyes of a drowning man who has seen his salvation float past just out of reach.

Then the Walker drops his head, fiddling with his keys.

“Nothing,” he answers. “Just getting directions back.”

Sam lifts his hand in silent farewell from his window as the Walker turns the car around, but Joe doesn’t wave in return. He will not salute any man who imposes his will upon another. Especially when that man knows that he risks lives not his own.

The Walker, sitting next to his brother, doesn’t glance in Joe’s direction. He keeps his jaw firm; his eyes forward, on the road ahead.

Joe stands by the steps of his trailer, tracking the black car’s departure by the cloud of dust it kicks up, until the only trace of his unsettling visitors are the tire tracks in the dirt. The wind will blow even those away by nightfall. Only Joe’s memories will last longer.

His memories of the plea in the Walker’s eyes, and his own failure to answer.

Joe stands where he is until the sun dips below the horizon and the night comes, and then goes back inside to wash his mugs.

**Author's Note:**

> I put this message out in the last suite!verse update, but since that verse is likely given a skip by some readers for its, um. Darkness. I thought I'd repost it here:
> 
> Since I'm not on LJ anymore, I can't set up a separate post for this, but I'm in the position of needing shorter pieces to poke at between finishing up suite!verse. And since I'm out of Fumblings, that's not going to work anymore. :) No promises I'd get to them all (the plot bunnies are fickle and random), but if anyone has suggestions or prompts of what they'd like to see (preferably in a vein dissimilar to suite!verse), feel free to drop me a line here.


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